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After 23 years as Artistic Director of The Public Theater, Oskar Eustis will step down when his current contract concludes on July 31, 2028, at the end of The Public Theater’s 60th anniversary season.
Oskar shared: “I have long hoped that my 70th birthday would be the right moment for me to pass this magnificent theater on to the next generation, and I believe that indeed, the perfect time has arrived. The theater has come through the storm of the last six years with its mission intact, robust and thriving. The Public is ready to tackle new challenges with all the integrity and creativity it has shown for the last 70-plus years.”
The Public’s Board of Trustees will begin a national search for their next Artistic Director this fall, with the goal of announcing a successor next year. The Public’s Executive Director, Patrick Willingham, will continue in his role supporting the organization and the transition.
Under Eustis’s leadership, The Public has presented around 250 productions, including Pulitzer Prize-winners Hamilton and Sweat, and the Tony Award-winning Fun Home.
Eustis revealed to the New York Times, the challenges of the years since Covid, stating, “the finances became harder than at any point in the history of the nonprofit theater. Almost all theaters have done a real retreat into less programming and greater timidity. I’m happy to say that’s not true at the Public.
The other thing that happened was I went from, at least on the surface, being somebody who the field generally approved of and had a positive opinion of to somebody who was the subject of many many attacks, as did most artistic directors. The result of that is every other artistic director of my age was either forced out or quit because they couldn’t take it any more. Maybe we should get used to being criticized. But that was hard to take.”
Throughout his career, Eustis has been dedicated to the development of new work that speaks to the great issues of our time and has worked with countless writers in pursuit of that aim, including Tony Kushner, Suzan-Lori Parks, David Henry Hwang, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Richard Nelson, Rinne Groff, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Lisa Kron, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Jeanine Tesori, Philip Kan Gotanda, Ellen McLaughlin, Emily Mann, John Leguizamo, Shaina Taub, James Ijames, Else Went, Michael Friedman, Alex Timbers, Erik Jensen, Jessica Blank, Ryan J. Haddad, Caryl Churchill, S. Shakthidharan, Itamar Moses, Martyna Majok, Lynn Nottage, Danai Gurira, Sarah Burgess, Stew, Wallace Shawn, Lawrence Wright, Sam Shepard, Mona Mansour, Adrienne Kennedy, John Belluso, Craig Lucas, Christopher Durang, and Richard Foreman.
Eustis’ tenure at The Public includes three Tony Award-winning Best Musicals (the 2009 revival of Hair, Fun Home in 2013, and Hamilton in 2015) as well as two winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (Hamilton in 2016 and Sweat in 2017). He also developed many other groundbreaking plays and musicals, including Passing Strange, Here Lies Love, Suffs, The Brother/Sister Plays, The Vagrant Trilogy, Eclipsed, Manahatta, The Fortress of Solitude, Soft Power, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, Ain’t No Mo’, Miss You Like Hell, Tiny Beautiful Things, and many, many more.
His committed leadership through changing economic tides, a global pandemic and generation-defining cultural upheaval, alongside his clear-eyed dedication to bolstering The Public’s foundational mission, found expression in the groundbreaking programs he developed. Those include: the Emerging Writers Group, which over the past 18 years boasts alumni such as Dominique Morisseau, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Ryan J. Haddad, Ethan Lipton, and Else Went; the revived Mobile Unit, which has reached audiences in every corner of the city, from parks to correctional facilities; Public Works, which has been adopted across the world as it mixes community members and professional artists in creating profound works of art; and Public Forum bringing world class thinkers, from Michael Sandel to Samantha Power to Reverend Samuel Barber, into dialogue with the theater.
Highlights of Eustis’ directorial work with The Public include the New York premieres of Rinne Groff’s The Ruby Sunrise and Compulsion; Larry Wright’s The Human Scale, which also toured to Tel Aviv; Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and Public Works’ Twelfth Night at The Delacorte; the world premiere of Suzan-Lori Parks’ White Noise; and the revival of Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day.
Eustis first walked into the Public Theater as a 16-year-old in 1975. He then spent 30 years, inspired by The Public, leading five theaters, from Switzerland to San Francisco to Rhode Island, until he had a chance to return to the theater that first taught him what a theater could be in 2005.
He commissioned Tony Kushner’s Angels in America when he ran the Eureka Theater in San Francisco (1980-1989) and directed its world premiere while at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles (1989-1994).
In 1995, he became Artistic Director of Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island, where during a 10-year tenure he revitalized the theater, twice winning the Eliot Norton Award for Outstanding Production in New England (for the world premiere of Paula Vogel’s Long Christmas Ride Home and Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul). While there, he founded and chaired the Trinity Rep/Brown University Consortium for Professional Theater Training.
